Ross Brawn leaves Mercedes

It has been confirmed that Ross Brawn will part company with Mercedes at the end of the current Formula One season.

Ross Brawn joined Mercedes as Team Principal in 2010 and has been an integral part of the gradual rise in performance of the team. However, recently Ross and Mercedes could not come to an agreement on his role going forward, and therefore the decision was made to end the relationship. I am betting this development was the last thing the likes of Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes supporters would have liked to have seen, as Ross is well respected and has a proven record of success in the sport. The Mercedes team will now be managed by their two executive directors, Paddy Lowe and Toto Wolfe, in addition to non-executive Chairman Niki Lauda.

This situation has been in the making for some time, ever since Lowe was taken on board last Christmas to replace Brawn immediately. Mercedes then decided that a staged hand over was the better option, and even wanted Ross to stay with another role being made to accommodate his expertise. But even with the backing and support of Lauda, Brawn was not able to live with the level, or the lack of control that he would have to live with. Ross Brawn has always believed that one person should be the single point of contact and control, in order to achieve success both on and off the track; a belief not held by Mercedes.

The present belief held by Mercedes is that a single point of contact or Team Principal is not suited to the modern environment of F1, with all the various aspects that have now become specialised in their own right. Therefore, Brawn has decided the best solution is to part ways with the team, and this means that from next season, Wolfe will be manage the political and financial aspects of the team, while Lowe will manage the sporting and technical aspects of the team, along with the operational side of the business.

It is great shame that Mercedes and Brawn could not work out some sort of compromise, as Brawn is undoubtedly a huge asset to any team in Formula One. There are rumours that he may be interested in joining Honda’s new F1 programme as they are scheduled to rejoin F1 racing in 2015, but nothing has been confirmed and insiders have suggested that it will never happen, considering his frustrating time with them when he ran their team back in 2007.